Two top officials of a Northern Virginia public school district were indicted Monday for their roles in the handling of a bathroom rape by a skirt-wearing boy after The Daily Wire revealed the apparent coverup last year, court documents unsealed Monday showed.
Former Loudoun County Superintendent Scott Ziegler , who was fired last week, was indicted on three misdemeanor counts of false publication, conflict of interest-prohibited conduct, and penalizing an employee for court appearance. Spokesman Wayde Byard was indicted on a felony charge of perjury, court records show.
A week ago, a special grand jury released a 91-page report that confirmed the findings of The Daily Wire’s October 2021 expose, determining that Ziegler told a “bald-faced lie” when he dismissed concerns about a proposed transgender policy by denying that there had ever been any bathroom sex assaults–despite knowing of the attack on a ninth-grade girl just a month earlier.
The grand jury said Ziegler’s administration also concealed from the public and even the school board that the same boy went on to sexually assault another girl in a classroom, with school board members learning about it from a report in The Daily Wire. The grand jury findings painted a devastating picture and showed that “throughout this ordeal LCPS administrators were looking out for their own interests instead of the best interests of LCPS.”
When The Daily Wire asked Byard last week about the grand jury’s fact-finding report, he sent a statement attributed to school board chair Jeff Morse and vice chair Ian Serotkin that said they were “pleased” that the grand jury had not indicted anyone. The Daily Wire noted in a response to Byard that Attorney General Jason Miyares had pointedly said “the grand jury is still running,” but Byard did not clarify.
On Monday, Byard did not return a request for comment on his own indictment.
The school board fired Ziegler on Tuesday, a day after the grand jury report–but fired him “without cause,” apparently giving him a $350,000 golden parachute.
An indictment for the misdemeanor of “false publication” said that “On or about June 22, 2021, [Ziegler] did unlawfully, knowingly, and willfully state, deliver or transmit by any means whatever to any publisher… any false and untrue statement, knowing the same to be false or untrue, concerning any person or corporation, with intent that the same shall be published.” June 22 was the date of the school board meeting, at which Ziegler also cited Time magazine to lecture parents that “we’ve heard it several times tonight from our public speakers but the predator transgender student or person simply does not exist.”
The two other counts related to Ziegler pertain to a different incident. They allege that Ziegler retaliated against Erin Brooks, a teacher who sued the school system alleging that the school district did not protect her from sexual assault by an elementary school student.
